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Not with me.”
    “I know. At least, part of me knows. The other part is terrified that you’ll grab me and . . .”
    “I won’t.”
    “How do I know?”
    “Because a man doesn’t get any more aroused than I am right now,” he grated. “But the part of me that frightens you doesn’t control my actions. My brain does. And my brain knows that anything worth doing with you is worth waiting for.”
    Her gaze went to his face, searching. He kept his own gaze steady.
    She laid her head against his shoulder, and they sat silently in the darkness.
    When she began to speak, her voice was wispy. “Do you remember the day I put my pet palistan in a boat and it drifted out into the lake?”
    “I found you standing on the shore crying,” he answered thickly.
    “And you jumped in and towed the boat back to me. Your father came along and found you all wet, and you got a whipping.”
    He nodded, remembering.
    “That was the day I fell in love with you,” she breathed.
    He stared at her, wondering if he’d heard correctly. She loved him ?
    “Until then you were just the big boy who was the leader of all the young people on the estate. That day, I lost my heart to you.”
    He started to reach for her, and her lower lip trembled though her eyes were soft and warm. Then her expression suddenly changed to deep alarm.
    “What? Did I frighten you?”
    “No. I saw something.”
    He turned, looked in the same direction, detected nothing but the blue moonlight on the stark hills. “What?”
    “A man.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “Yes.” Her gaze stayed trained on the rise of ground as she sucked in a little breath. “Two men. Three. Dorre. Crouching, using the rocks for cover.”
    “How do you know they’re Dorre?”
    “By the way they’re moving. They can’t see where to put their feet. But they have weapons. A lot of weapons.”
    He swore under his breath, snapping into combat mode, his training taking over. The intruders weren’t walking up to the front door. They were approaching by stealth, at night. Probably they were deserters, desperate men who wouldn’t take prisoners.
    “I guess they aren’t here to beg food rations,” he said aloud.
    “What are we going to do?” she asked, the question coming out in a thin gasp, and he knew she was remembering what the soldiers had done to her.
    “Make them wish they’d sneaked up on someone else.”
    “What if you can’t?”
    His hand closed over her wrist, feeling the blood thundering in her veins. “I will not let them get anywhere near you,” he swore.
    She sat still as a statue. He watched her rigid features and knew her terror might swallow her whole.
    “Kasi, trust me to keep you safe.”
    At first he wondered if she were capable even of hearing his words. Then her shoulders straightened, and she raised her face to his. He saw the effort she was making to push away the terror and knew she was doing it for him as much as for herself.
    Turning, she looked toward the intruders, then spoke with a detached, steely calm. “They have night viewers. But they haven’t spotted us.”
    “Good.” He gave her hand a quick squeeze. “Kasi, you’re going to have to get my leg. And the laser pistol on the bed stand. I’ll meet you in the computer room.”
    She nodded, darted into the building. Grabbing the crutch, he followed as fast as he could.
    In the nerve center of the house, he scanned the alarms. Nothing. The intruders were too far away. They might have been there for days, watching, planning their move. If he got Kasi and himself out of this alive, he’d have to booby trap the hills.
    If.
    Bringing his mind back to the crisis, he activated the long-range scanners. He was rewarded by three sensor readings on the view screen. Three Dorre men, as she’d said, and they were moving this way.
    Kasi came in with the prosthesis. It hurt to put the damned thing on so soon after he’d taken it off, but he ignored the pain, grateful that he could walk almost